Here is the place you run, as the cop is after you.
Go left to the stairs, but don't go down the stairs yet, as you will just be shot when you step down the stairs.

So you better search for the crowbar, because the door to the right is locked and the crowbar might be useful here.

Well, the crowbar is not easy to find, that's kind of the first riddle in Beneath a Steel Sky. Drag the mouse on the upper border of the stairs but don't click, the game shows you the word stairs, now move the mouse to the left end of the stairs and a little bit up. Perhaps you need to go a little bit to the left. Now the game shows you rung so you click with the right button and get the crowbar.
Use the crowbar to open the door on the right.

The guard hears the noise and comes to check out, where the sound came from!
With a little bit of luck you survive this unpleasant situation. After the cutscene enter the recycling plant again.
Go down the stairs and enter the door to the right.

Look at the trash there. One of the robots seems to not have a circuit board, so smash in Joey's Circuits from behind, and Joey will come to life again. Now talk to Joey, who's trapped in a cleaning robot by now.

Go one more room to the right and talk to Hobbins. Open the cupboard door. But you will find out Hobbins won't let you open the door, so go back one room.
Now step on the lift. Once the alert is activated Hobbins will enter the scene, command you away from the lift and turn off the alert. While Hobbins is turning off the alert enter his workshop and steal the wrench and the sandwich from the cupboard. The wrench is more important, it doesn't matter if you get the sandwich or not.

If this doesn't work out for you because Hobbins gets back too fast and displaces you even before you could get the wrench do the following: step on the lift and set the game speed to the sloooooooowest speed possible and try this again. This time it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Now go back to the broken robot that's standing there and is waiting to be repaired. Try to repair it with the wrench. This doesn't work out quite well, so ask Hobbins 'what's up with the robo?' (in Foster's words). First you have to talk a lot about escaping, that's also interesting, so the last question will be about the robot and he tells you what the problem is, make sure you get it all, and then ask Joey if he can help you repair the robot. After playing around some more with the game I noticed, you don't have to steal everything from Hobbins to escape from the recycling plant, you just have to talk to Hobbins long enough and he will give you clues that you can talk about with Joey and get the robo repaired. But you will need Hobbin's wrench later on anyways, so you can steal it now already...

After the robot is repaired everything works as it should and the robot starts bringing barrels. I don't WANT to know whats inside these barrels. Well, the robot puts them on the lift and the lift carries them down.
At the very moment the lift is down Foster can slide down the liftbar (right- click on the hole!)

You find yourself in front of a furnace down here. Try to open the door and stuffing stuff in the slot. After finding out, that this doesn't work, ask Joey for help (once again).
The door opens and Officer Reich enters the room and wants to kill you, because he thinks you are Overmann. But LINC (the camera) prevents him from killing you in a radical manner. Thank you LINC. Before you continue your quest search the corpse for the sunglasses and Reich's ID-Card. Take both with you and carry on...